I did it...

Imagine you get photos made of three quilts by a professional photographer to be able to enter these quilts in a pestigious show in Germany. Patchwork Gilde Deutschland has a tri-annual juried show called "Tradition bis Moderne" (From Tradition to Modern), I have been in it a couple of times, and I even have juried it once. I wanted to finish two quilts for this show which are both still pretty far from being finished, by at some point I realized I didn't need to fret about this. I could enter others. But I needed the professional photos. Fortunately, the photographer who used to take the photos of my quilts when I was still living in that small town to the north-east of Munich had agreed that I could send the quilts in a package, he would shoot the photos, ship the quilts back and send me the files digitally.

He did send. I did download. I remember that I did. But when I finally got around to "you need to get this entry in" and it was already getting relatively close to the deadline, I could for the life of me not find the files. No memory left of what names I had attached, hard disc searches were unsuccessful, even the digital native could not help. Fortunately I still had a tiny bit of leeway and I called the photographer the next mornign and asked him to send the files again, which he kindly did.

This time I managed to keep track of where I downloaded and saved the files, was organized enought to find out whether I had to downsize the pictures, had typed up artist statements that I could just copy-paste, and got my entry in more than 2 hours ahead of time.

The show takes only one quilt per entrant, but I figured it would increase my chances to try with the three pieces of entry allowed. Now we will have to see whether one of them makes the cut.

Here are the detail shots I included in the entry.

 

Detail from "Alchemy of Textiles"

 

Detail from "The Legendary Blue NuDenim"

Detail from "The Quilt that Sewed Itself"

 

 This Blog Entry, again, has been a long time in the making. I started to write it right after New Years', mildly proud that I had managed to get the application in. But as I am still juggling between two different computers and haven't figured out my saving system yet and am unable to let go of the photo editing software that is on the old one but can't tranfer to the new one... once I have written the text, somehow it registers as 'done', but of course the pictures need to be included, and as mentioned, something was amiss with these photos.

So by now it might even be time to receive news whether either of the three was accepted. I know only one will be shown if at all. I just hope at least one makes it, disappointment would be severe if all three fell through. But then, I have juried quilts out for this show. Fittingly, the next magazine's topic is 'Rejected!' and I wrote an article on #quiltconreject. We'll see whether I learned something from it. 

 

 

 

The Quilt that sewed itself (Diary of recovery)

One of the first real-life impressions I had of Kathleen Loomis was when we were both attending a Master Class at Nancy Crow’s barn in Ohio and Kathy was showing one of her mind-boggling postage stamp quilts to some people in the room. I don’t remember whether it was “Spaghetti Sauce” or  “The Great Lawn” but I certainly remember what I thought when I saw her unrolling the meticulously packaged quilt of a zillion (or so it seemed) small pieces held together by thread lines: it was a mixture of sincere awe and asking myself whether she was out of her mind. (I like people who are slightly off the beaten track!) 

Meanwhile Kathy and I have become good friends, and even before I met her I did what she had done that eventually started her off on the postage stamp quilts: I used small pieces of fabric as sewing-on-sewing-off pieces to stabilize thread tension in between seams on a current project. But for a while I was getting to the point where they were accumulating and I did not know what to do with them, really. I used some on small quilts:

 

I used some on a T-shirt I had to mend at the side seam. I had cut out the washing instructions label and cut into the jersey fabric and did not want to throw away the new shirt, so I simply sewed two of the pieces on the side seam, a little later I also added some more on the edge of the neckline. And I have put some on certain spots of jeans that needed mending.

 

But overall I was at a loss – no way could I start making larger pieces similar to Kathy’s, it is so much her style that I would never have made a piece out of any number of these. On the other hand, having them at the sewing machine throat was just so handy, because it was so much easier to start and finish off a seam when using them. So when I saw a post on Instagram by Maryline Collioud-Robert / @mary_and_patch where she showed a ‘quilt that had sewed itself’ and checked up on the respective blog entry and realized that she was basically doing that same thing with scraps that she then put together into a scrap quilt, I knew that this phrase filled a need of mine.

But I took a slightly different approach. Last year I had started yet another piece with which I was going to commemorate more refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean – but with my increasing frustration about the whole situation I was growing more desperate, and at some point that quilt stalled. What use counting dead refugees by creating blue four-patch blocks…? The precuts and pieces that had been sewn already were left sitting there in a basket, another one amongst my too many unfinished pieces. And I had seen another post on Instagram, by DianaVandeyar /@dianavandeyar, whom I had met in South Africa last year. She was revisiting her many years of digital pattern designs and it included a design with four-patch blocks that set me on a track of thinking about what I could do with those blue four-patches. 

Here is where it all comes together, just in case you are wondering: I needed something to sew on and sew off, I wanted to do something with the four-patches and I liked the phrase ‘a quilt that sewed itself’. So while I was working on my lockdown-pieces, I also worked on the blue four-patches, finishing them, putting them into double-four-patches, and the whole thing grew into a large blanket. 

 

The process took off at a point where a number of four-patches had been finished, but it also included sewing a few last strips together, cut-offs into four-patches, and then four-patches into double four-patches with the oranges, and then double-doubles. So there were a few phases where a bit of planning ahead and preparing was needed, but I kept the planning to a minimum in order to be able to concentrate on the main quilt(s) for which this one was only the sew-on-sew-off .

Here are photos of the back in the making. I had so many double-four-patches left over once I decided I was going to eliminate the ones with yellow and stick to only basically orange for the front. Yet I did not want any leftover blocks, and I did not want to have to come up with another idea for them. So the yellow ones ended up on the back.

 

It has been quilted, and I do like how it turned out. Not sure yet whether it will also be entered somewhere but we will see. Now I need to get the binding on. And I have already started on my next quilt that sews itself as I sew on and off. This one is going to be a lot more scrappy, meaning there will at least for a while be even less planning needed. 

Thank you, Kathy, Marie and Diana – so much fun when inspiration is fed from different sources and it all comes together somehow!

on the side

 I am a sucker for scraps, I must have mentioned this before. And as my 'big' projects right now are either waiting to be accepted or rejected, or will be entered somewhere I can't really write about anything else. So while I am running interior dialogues as to how to proceed with the thing that is behind me on the wall - can I come up with another way of transferring the text onto the top instead of using the dissolvable film I have been using so far, because I don't want to have to boil this one to dissolve the film...? - I spent a part of the afternoon sorting through a box of scraps which has been under my feet for a while.

I am certain many people have boxes like these. The sorting process is soothing, and I try to decide whether they are still eligible to be included in crazy scrapping, then they get sorted into stacks according to color, perhaps value as well.

note: the box is still in the background

And just how small do scraps have to get before you throw them into the bin without regret?

I have a few templates lyeing around which determine the future according to size of scraps that occur. This hexagon is the smallest one of the templates and takes care of really small scraps. The hexagons finish at half an inch. I also do diamonds. One inch.

For this one, I timed myself the other day. If the pieces have been prepared (they are sorted in bags by light - medium - dark values) sewing this takes about 20something minutes. Not that it matters to know that, really, during making. Perhaps later, when - if - the thing should ever get finished and some smart viewer asks 'so how long did it take you to make that?'

I haven't come up with a really good method for that text transferral yet, but I did clean out that box and could put something else into it. One thing ticked off the list.

Tomorrow I will be teaching a three-hour-online version of my IQ class for the German Guild's "Summer Academy". Preparing for that has taken quite a bit of time during the last two weeks (and I had a busy time at work). I never wanted to teach online. I had thought I was finished teaching that class. What a combination. 

I do admit, I am a bit nervous. Sending out the announcement e-mail was ridden with bumps and errors already. The past few days my internet connection has been instable, which is not a good prerequisite for online activities that are supposed to be constant, for at least three hours. Let's just hope things go well.

Purple Rain.

Or Acid Rain. A good downpour of it, that is what I am wishing for these days. And then a good four weeks of quiet, steady spring rain. The first two to keep people inside. And the drizzle for the soil, the garden. Everything is so dry, it is unbelievable. And people are out and about, it is unbelievable. The past couple of weeks were still pretty cool and uninviting, but now the temperatures are rising and the weather forecast is predicting temperatures up to the 20s (centigrade), so it will be much more likely that people won’t stay put. And I keep hearing stories 'my sister went to see her boyfriend, and he had been to his grandpa's and two days later he had symptoms and is in hospital now, what should I do?' And I wonder...But I am also getting so sick and tired of this topic that I don’t want to go into it.

I know I am privileged – I can go to work, and I have a garden where I can look forward to rhubarb

promise of rhubarb pie - if I can get flour...

and a terrace where we can sit outside in this spring weather. And we live out in the country. I can go walking without meeting anybody. And I do, because I need to do something to stay sane.

I played with my new toy some more, carding a piece of ‘Hikers’ Wool’ which I had brought back from New Zealand in 2015, and which I had been meaning to spin since. However, it was not enough to knit a pair of socks, and I kept thinking I would order some more, but now I have simply mixed it with a bit of silk and other merino fiber and will eventually make me some bed socks. Yes, I am getting to be an old woman, but I have been going to sleep with handmade socks for many many years now and this pair will be a special pair indeed.

Some yellow fibers as well. 

If it were for the amount of spinning material, I could stay in lockdown until Christmas. That is not the problem.

I am taking a small lull in the yellow scraps project, but it has progressed a little bit. 

Although this picture doesn't really show the progress...

I had other ideas as well, have tested various aspects of them and can’t make up my mind. 

I try to do some cleaning up of my studio and have retrieved a linen blouse from one box which I used to wear a lot and can’t remember why it ended up in that box, because except for a little spot or two it is in a wonderful state. So I have given it a second introduction into my wardrobe. 

I have a small attention span only these days. I am busy. I am not really getting anything done on a creative level.

But I made yeast – another toilet-paper kind of commodity all of a sudden

(I mean, is everybody suddenly starting to
bake with yeast dough?)

– and my usual Quark ( a kind of curd cheese), 

I baked a loaf of bread (which did not find my son’s approval and I made bird feed. Which at least finds the birds' approval.

 

After this stage the stuff was rolled into little balls, and they do like them!

So yes, I do get things done. But not those that need to done…

Notes and thoughts from social isolation

So numbers of infection in Germany are rising, the curfew has been extended until April 20th and I am beginning to understand why early warnings or concerns had been voiced that instances of domestic violence might also increase. (Not going into details here… but …)

Did a bit of gardening yesterday

Our district supposedly has been called a Hot Spot, too, because of a sudden increase from 216 infections to 281 within a day, nothing else seems to be on the news anymore and I have am getting sick and tired of the topic. Plus developing a bit of cabin fever, although I do take a lot of care to get out and exercise every day.

Reflections on the river when I went to fetch milk from the farm this morning

The willow tree which I photographed pretty regularly for a while took
serious beatings in storms since. But there is just the slightest shad of green...

My son and I have started selling some of his LEGO pieces that he has outgrown on ebay, we went through his wardrobe and tried to diminish the stash.

I spin – very fine spinning!

This is just a tiny sample where I plied the thread onto itself, it
is not going to be like this, but I wanted to see the potential.
I am aiming for a three-ply with different mixtures.

And I am slowly working on my scraps, but the real creative spark is missing. Therefore there hasn’t been that much progress really. I have added a few of the grey rounds around the individual pieces, and have also included a few more - newly 'made' - pieces with fine lines because I thought it would probably look awkward if these appeared only in the upper right hand corner. I hope to get back to it after I finish this post.

I signed up to participate in a psychological study on the effects of this period on people, their feelings of loneliness or connectedness and am waiting for their daily questionnaires. But it is a weird period. Befittingly, I am also currently reading a book by a German paleontologist on human migration waves, the way that genetic material was distributed – and yesterday I read the chapter on how illness, and especially infectious diseases had a decisive influence on it all. It’s only been a few hundred years since the plague, and considerably less than that since the killer diseases of typhus, tubercolosis etc. We had the Spanish Flu only 100 years ago, we are witnessing multi-resistance in microbes and there has been abundant warning about this – and I wonder at how the human setup can be so ill-oriented that we as a kind believe something like the plague won’t hit us again. Such arrogance. I didn’t foresee this kind of pandemic, but I am not surprised that it is happening. I am more surprised at that we really think we can get through this in a better way than earlier populations could, just because we have hospitals and might even be able to find some kind of medication that will be effective in this. We need to be more aware of the fact that humans are vulnerable,  that they must die of something. No medication is available to secure immortality, and, if we are honest, who wants to be immortal? 

It probably isn’t fun to die of this virus. But is it more fun to die of cancer, or after years of dementia? I don’t know. But I don’t think the kind of social isolation we are practising right now is going to be really effective in maintaining the ‚crisis‘ at a ‚manageable‘ level. And yes, I  would very much like to   be proven  wrong in this one!